Panasonic Corp, the world’s largest maker of consumer electronics, will seek to buy control of Sanyo Electric Co from its biggest shareholders, a company official familiar with the negotiations said.
Panasonic will make a formal acquisition proposal soon to Goldman Sachs Group Inc, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp and Daiwa Securities SMBC Co, the official said, declining to be identified because the plan has not been publicly disclosed.
“It’s not surprising to start to see some consolidation,” said Ed Rogers, chief executive officer at Tokyo-based hedge-fund adviser Rogers Investment Advisors YK.
Goldman and the two Japanese banks hold preferred shares equivalent to 70 percent of Sanyo, the world’s biggest maker of rechargeable batteries, received when they bailed out the company in February 2006. They agreed to hold the securities until March next year, and need Sanyo’s approval to sell before then.
The preferred shares would be worth more than US$6 billion if converted to common stock at Friday’s closing price of ¥145.
Panasonic will begin talks to buy a majority stake in Sanyo to expand into the solar power business, the Nikkei Shimbun reported earlier yesterday. Hiroyuki Okamoto, a spokesman for Sanyo, said he isn’t aware of any such negotiations.
Spokeswomen at Goldman and Sumitomo Mitsui declined to comment, and calls to Daiwa’s Tokyo office went unanswered.
Sanyo, the world’s leading maker of lithium ion batteries and the third-biggest solar panel producer in Japan, spent years losing money as competition prevented it from profiting on digital cameras and other consumer goods. The company refocused on rechargeable batteries and solar panels after the bailout, scaling back unprofitable businesses such as computer chips.
Panasonic is looking to expand into the fast-growing solar market, while batteries hold growth potential as carmakers move to develop electric vehicles, according to the report.
“There are certain industries that are more efficient than others and therefore the less efficient ones are going to be facing consolidation,” Rogers said. “A lot of guys have cash as Japan’s had five of the healthiest years since World War II.”
US solar power installations grew by 45 percent last year, the Solar Energy Industries Association reported. Sanyo plans to expand solar cell production capacity by 60 percent at a Japanese plant, Kyodo News said on Friday.
Sanyo, whose name means “three oceans,” also teamed up with Volkswagen AG, Europe’s largest carmaker, to develop a lithium-ion battery system for use in hybrid cars.
Panasonic has fared relatively better than Japan’s other electronics makers during the current global economic slump.
Less reliance on overseas demand compared with rivals including Sony Corp, coupled with strong demand for appliances such as washing machines in China and other markets, helped support profitability. The company beat its second-quarter profit estimates on Tuesday.
Combined projected sales of Panasonic and Sanyo for the year ending March 31 are about ¥11.2 trillion (US$113.6 million), company forecasts say.
That would surpass Hitachi Ltd as the nation’s biggest maker of electrical equipment and catapult Panasonic to the No. 3 spot in revenue among listed Japanese companies.
Napoleon Osorio is proud of being the first taxi driver to have accepted payment in bitcoin in the first country in the world to make the cryptocurrency legal tender: El Salvador. He credits Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s decision to bank on bitcoin three years ago with changing his life. “Before I was unemployed... And now I have my own business,” said the 39-year-old businessman, who uses an app to charge for rides in bitcoin and now runs his own car rental company. Three years ago the leader of the Central American nation took a huge gamble when he put bitcoin
Demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips should spur growth for the semiconductor industry over the next few years, the CEO of a major supplier to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said, dismissing concerns that investors had misjudged the pace and extent of spending on AI. While the global chip market has grown about 8 percent annually over the past 20 years, AI semiconductors should grow at a much higher rate going forward, Scientech Corp (辛耘) chief executive officer Hsu Ming-chi (許明琪) told Bloomberg Television. “This booming of the AI industry has just begun,” Hsu said. “For the most prominent
PARTNERSHIPS: TSMC said it has been working with multiple memorychip makers for more than two years to provide a full spectrum of solutions to address AI demand Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it has been collaborating with multiple memorychip makers in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in artificial intelligence (AI) applications for more than two years, refuting South Korean media report's about an unprecedented partnership with Samsung Electronics Co. As Samsung is competing with TSMC for a bigger foundry business, any cooperation between the two technology heavyweights would catch the eyes of investors and experts in the semiconductor industry. “We have been working with memory partners, including Micron, Samsung Memory and SK Hynix, on HBM solutions for more than two years, aiming to advance 3D integrated circuit
Former Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) yesterday warned against the tendency to label stakeholders as either “pro-China” or “pro-US,” calling such rigid thinking a “trap” that could impede policy discussions. Liu, an adviser to the Cabinet’s Economic Development Committee, made the comments in his keynote speech at the committee’s first advisers’ meeting. Speaking in front of Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰), National Development Council (NDC) Minister Paul Liu (劉鏡清) and other officials, Liu urged the public to be wary of falling into the “trap” of categorizing people involved in discussions into either the “pro-China” or “pro-US” camp. Liu,
RSS